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Submitting a DMCA Takedown for a Persona

Update: I did eventually find the terms of service. You have to be logged in to getpersonas.com in order to see them. Also, the DMCA information is linked at the bottom of getpersonas.com as “Legal Notices”.

Although I couldn’t find the terms of service for submitting a Persona to getpersonas.com, the FAQs indicates that you must agree to the following:

You either own all the elements of your design OR you are authorized worldwide to reproduce and distribute them (and allow others to do so) by the owner or the law.

Your design does not contain provocative, offensive, or sexual content (i.e., it is G or PG-rated).

Your design does not include identifiable elements of any non-celebrity person(s) other than yourself or individuals who have given you permission to do so.

Your design does not depict violence or Nazi imagery, nor is it discriminatory or hateful.

Your design does not relate to gambling.

Your design does not violate any applicable law or regulation or the rights of any person or entity.

It’s pretty clear from through the Personas inventory, that a lot of people are simply ignoring these restrictions, and Mozilla doesn’t have the volunteer capacity to enforce them.

So if you discover an image that is a violation of your trademark or copyright, you must submit a DMCA takedown notice in order to get it removed. I was unable to find this information on getpersonas.com, but I did find it on the main Mozilla website, so I wanted to share it with anyone who needs it.

Be aware, though, that based on the information at the end of that section, Mozilla might post your DMCA request to the Chilling Effects website.

Mike, you had to submit a DMCA takedown for something? I figured members of the Mozilla community could help police, even in single instances, without having to go the legal rout. What’s going on here?

I was investigating the issue of copyright infringement as it related to some of Brand Thunder’s clients just in case the subject came up with them.

When I asked @rdoherty about the situation, his response was that a DMCA takedown notice was the procedure for addressing copyright issues.

As far as the Mozilla community policing itself, this is clearly not the case as every Persona that contains any sports team logo (at least NFL and NBA) that was not placed there by the team would need to be removed. A cursory glance of getpersonas.com shows many Personas that are obviously infringing.

When I was researching this, I found at least one case of a Persona that was created using an image that very obviously didn’t belong to the author:

Mike, if your copyrighted artwork is being used inappropriately in a persona, I’ll bet you could talk directly to the right people and get it corrected without resorting to a DMCA takedown notice. It seems a bit odd that you’d go the “sic the law on them” approach when you actually know most of the people involved with the program.

OK. the whole point of my commenting was to see if you were lumping yourself in with the un-connected masses and taking the formal rout when, given your involvement in the community I’d think there are obviously more effective approaches available to you.

# Your design does not contain provocative, offensive, or sexual content (i.e., it is G or PG-rated).
# Your design does not include identifiable elements of any non-celebrity person(s) other than yourself or individuals who have given you permission to do so.
# Your design does not depict violence or Nazi imagery, nor is it discriminatory or hateful.
# Your design does not relate to gambling.
# Your design does not violate any applicable law or regulation or the rights of any person or entity.

Don’t you love these terms of service?

1st) If can’t find something that’s offensive or provocative, then you’re not alive! besides this first rule violates the last: freedom of speech laws, discrimination based of personal identity and so on. The wording is purposely vague: offensive? provocative?, please…

2nd) So it’s ok to violate the rights of celebrities? great laws!

3rd) Again: discriminatory, arbitrary, vague… Why not Turkish (see Turkish-Armenia); Chinese (China-Tianamen); Soviet; or even USA. You do know that the symbol associated with the Nazis, that cross, existed well before them, don’t you?

4th) Arbitrary, vague… Gambling!?? How about Vodka; Tequilla; Wine; Beer; Weed, Meth; Viagra; religion. Or about any other business

5th) This one always baffled, why these internet services include this as they are clearly in violation of several national/european laws: discrimination and freedom of speech only but two.

All these terms are contradictory among themselves.

Censorship is always easy to make fun of because censorship is stupid and coward. If you were serious about really implementing any of these terms then the number of personas would be reduced to zero. But… hypocrisy rules, as long as most of the controversy is at large everything is great.

None of these terms are directly related with DMCAs. It’s also sad that you’re advocating the use of the one of the most stupid and unjust laws to resolve these matters.